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Asians and intersectionality
45 Plays2 months ago
In the latest episode, Eccho, Duoc, and Jenny chat about intersectionality among AAPIs. With a little help from AANHPI Data Community Data Explorer, we highlight notable similarities and important differences associated with different intersectional identities within the AAPI diaspora.
If you want to follow-along, check out the link to aapidata.com.
For the identity exercise, check out: Who am I?
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Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Overview
00:00:08
Speaker
Hello, listeners. Welcome to another episode of Healing in Clean Science, All Things Aging in the Workplace. I'm Echo. I'm back. I'm Jenny. Welcome back, Jenny. I'm Dirk. Glad to be back. Yeah, so today we're actually going to talk about intersectionality.
00:00:27
Speaker
So do any of you want to talk through our thought process, how we came up with this topic for this episode? Yeah, sure.
Understanding Intersectionality
00:00:37
Speaker
So intersectionality refers to, it's just a way of looking at and understanding how group and individuals, you know social or and or political identities can result in unique discrimination as well as privilege. And that's the official definition, but it's really a way to look at, well, how do we overlap identities and what does that look like? How does, how might bias or you know racism or whatever manifest
00:01:06
Speaker
um for different groups once we start adding on things like, you know, race and gender, race and socioeconomic status, race and age. And there's so many different combinations that this can take. So we just thought it would be interesting to take this angle and talk a little bit about how this applies to the AAPI population simply because we are such a diverse group and there's so many different ways that we can look at and analyze our own experiences.
00:01:35
Speaker
um But before before we start, I just had to share this.
Kimchi Uber Ride Story
00:01:38
Speaker
So remember we did that episode on like yams and yaks? Yeah, yeah. So yesterday, I went shopping. I went to like a Korean supermarket. This just came to me. And um I bought kimchi. And I got an Uber back home. And I realized, oh, what's that smell? It smells so bad. And then I realized it looked like kimchi in my bag. And then I noticed that the driver had opened his window.
00:02:05
Speaker
Oh. So I just had to see something. I was like, oh, sorry, that's my kimchi. It's fermented cabbage. And he's like, oh, I've had that before. And he was like, oh, that's what that smell was. Jenny, did you feel microaggress in the tattoo? No, no, I didn't. The January smell's back. Yeah, the January smell. If you don't know what it is, you're like, what is that decomp smell coming from, like, backseat? And I didn't want him to think it was, like, me dying in the backseat.
00:02:35
Speaker
So I had to just like acknowledge and say sorry, that's my kimchi. I didn't realize it would smell so bad. But yeah, I just have to share that. That's hilarious. You know, some of the best foods that we get, like we eat just tastes like smells so bad, but it tastes so good, though, you know? Yeah.
00:02:52
Speaker
I mean, we did say that in our episode that some food is just in general not bad. So not like not people wanted to play my crew class.
00:03:08
Speaker
Okay, um so yeah, sa sorry for the tangent, but um going back to our topic.
Research Challenges in Intersectionality
00:03:13
Speaker
So, you know, one thing, one exercise that we did, that that Echo and I did earlier on but while we were prepping for this is like, okay, let's look at the literature and see like what we can reference. And I don't know about you, Echo, but it just felt really overwhelming.
00:03:29
Speaker
it it's Yeah, there's a lot of data. Like, do I look at race and ethnicity? Is it race and age, race and gender? Like, where do I start? And yeah, that's so sort of like where I ended up. duug Like, do you have any experience with intersectionality?
00:03:44
Speaker
Oh my gosh. I mean, I think there's the typical stuff that we have in the psychological literature, right? So what it may be, ah you know, what it may mean to be Asian and male or Asian female or ah female and black. um Some of the things that you're bringing up with this topic, it's not only just invisible identities, like not only race, ah ethnicity, gender, but also invisible identities, like like home ownership, like socioeconomic status.
00:04:13
Speaker
potentially disability, right? Health insurance status and all that. ah At a glance, it does look overwhelming. And I guess like my my thought on this was that I wonder how many studies are out there that are like that, right? Because we can like break down so many different identities, whether first of all, there will be any data on this, or whether there be any study on this because we know how like how like like least how psychological studies are structured and is that you need to have like other psych studies like to to cite ah to go back and take a look at at certain data. and even it's Even if that data has been collected. right When I thought about that,
00:04:57
Speaker
I was a little overwhelmed too, and I felt bad for you both, because I know it was an episode that I wasn't supposed to be, wasn't gonna be a part of, but like I looked back and I'm like, my goodness, Jenny and Echo must have done a ton, I'm gonna take out my ex with him, of work to prep for this. And I'm like, oh my goodness, there's a lot of different rabbit holes we can go down, which one are we gonna go down?
Personal Identity Sharing
00:05:20
Speaker
Well, I was just saying like, but isn't that the the reality?
00:05:25
Speaker
Like everyone is so complex. Each of us will have one, two, three, I don't know how many of the identity I have on us. And a lot of times they intersect. And that's the beauty of intersectionality because none of us can be defined by like just one attribute.
00:05:44
Speaker
Jenna, you remember that exercise we did at SIAP one time where the the speaker told us to take a moment and write down our identities? Oh, yeah. Should we do that ourselves and then give our our get audience a moment to to do that as well too? Do you remember the instructions for that? um I think it was like write down like the three or four most important identities that you feel, ah that that that pertains to you.
00:06:09
Speaker
I'll tell you, yeah, we could do that. And maybe like if we do that independently, then then we can do we can share it with each other. Is that OK? Yeah, let's do that. Can I remember the microaggression I got from it? We can leave that out. Take this out. The microaggression you got from it? Yeah, yeah. I'll share that when we we we talk about the identities.
00:06:31
Speaker
I think you'll get a good laugh out of it, Jenny. OK. I love hearing about microaggressions.
00:06:40
Speaker
Not the target of it, right? No, I love hearing about it from the perspective of the target. And hearing what they did, what was going through their head. This is a good exercise. Cool. yeah Two or three? I have three. Do you have three? I have five. Oh goodness.
00:07:04
Speaker
We can count out of three. We can totally count out of three. What's out of contest? If you have five, you should share five. Yeah, share, just share. yeah Whatever you're comfortable sharing. I think, yeah, it'd be kind of interesting because like in a way, like maybe I feel like I know you both a little bit better, but I think in maybe like revealing these identities, like maybe it really showcases like where I see you versus where you see you, yeah which is I think will be really interesting. And hopefully our audience members will actually get a chance to take a moment and to do this as well too. yeah Well, shall we shall we share?
00:07:39
Speaker
Who wants to go first? Do we do like all ah like do we just go through our list or do we go around? We can do a Ron Robin first and we can just... I like that idea. Yeah. And then jump into it. I can share one of mine. One of mine is just Vietnamese American because I was thinking about it and my family, well not just my family, I've been in the US for most of my life like 30 something, like 36 years and I've only spent like five years outside of it.
00:08:09
Speaker
So um I didn't get my citizenship till like in my 20s, but like that's over like half my half my life. And it's been something that kind of, you know, has resonated with me and I feel strongly about it. And I feel like, in a way, it's a Vietnamese American is also like a political term like Vietnamese American, like Asian American, like depending how we group ourselves or just disaggregate ourselves. Like it's still potentially a term that I think brings folks together. So that was something I felt strongly that described me. Thanks for sharing that. So are we doing like one each or just going down the list? Do you want me to go down? I can go down my list. Yeah, sure. Yeah, I'm going to finish that first.
00:08:59
Speaker
The other one I had was i kind of I thought about these two a little bit and kind of given the the kind of news about some of the stuff that's been happening in Springfield, Ohio. I didn't want to run away from this one and it's immigrant slash refugee because i my family came over here on certain statuses because of the Vietnam War.
00:09:23
Speaker
And we started, you know in a way, our lives again in the late 80s in the US. And some of the things that the Haitian community is actually going through right now, ah we went through back then. But it feels like it's the same old playbook, the same subtle discrimination, the same explicit discrimination that's being used against them was used against us decades ago. And I wouldn't be surprised if it was the same thing um that that was used at for other groups as well too. So that includes Polish people, Italians, Irish folks as well. So um it feels like as a student history, sometimes we only get to watch some of the things that repeat itself. And there's a part of me that wonder like, how can we actually interject and limit or minimize some of these biases that happen quite so often to new groups of immigrants or and groups of people.
00:10:25
Speaker
And then my other one is just being an uncle because I have nine nieces and nephews and a bunch of unofficial nieces and nephews that I kind of mentor and kind of shepherd and they're important to me and I try to do my best to provide insight and things I know about to make their lives a little bit easier as they navigate through the workplace and potentially life as well too.
00:10:47
Speaker
So those are the the the identities that kind of that are important to me and i I feel good about having those labels on me. Even though some may disagree that maybe immigrant and refugee may be negative, I beg to differ because it shows I get to be as being, I guess, one of those folks. I get to define what it's like to be one of those folks and it's not all negative. And it can be positive as well too. So that's me in that shell.
00:11:14
Speaker
Thank you for sharing, Ben. I love that. Echo or Jenny, how about you two identities? I can go next. I actually wrote down five of them, but I'm gonna just talk to four of them. Sure, sure. Let's hear it. The fifth one is rather personal. The first one is actually a woman. I think that label in recent years has become more and more sane to me. I don't know if because it has something to do with age. And I just started to realizing that more and more. And the second one I had written is ah Chinese um and slash like East Asian. Because I just felt like as we were talking about a lot of those identity that we have talked about, that that's definitely something add upon that women label and that have experienced at my life, at my work. And the third one, and I'm
00:12:12
Speaker
because I'm going to share the fourth one. So those I think those two are probably like on bar with each other. And the third one I write is a single child. um Because for some reason, if you know, I share this in the past, I'm the single child in my family. And that actually um pressed a lot of the the pressure on me and socially and within the family itself. And that's also how it is shaped some of my behavior, how I think about my relationship with my parents, with my family. um And the fourth one, which is a mint one, is a PhD. Being a PhD in social organizational psychology
00:12:56
Speaker
is the first one in my family, of course. And also, considering the background, none of my ah family members has a domestic degree or a bachelor. um And i I think it can become more real after I get this degree this year.
00:13:13
Speaker
even though i it has been how it shaped my thinking of over the past few years. I'm going to quickly turn over to Jenny. Yeah, thanks for sharing that. So like you, Echo, my first identity that I put down was my gender, being a woman. and I think you and I, we all know why you know gender is such a salient topic, especially if you are a woman in this country. um And then the second one was Korean American. And then the third one, I actually have four. So the third one is My profession. Sorry. That's okay. Your third one is. ah My profession as a researcher, my identity as someone who does research. I think that's a really salient thing for me. And then the fourth one was immigrant. So like like on paper, like I was born in the US, but I don't have the same upbringing as most Asian Americans in that I moved around a lot. I grew up. you know, in Jamaica, Korea, Hawaii, Hawaii is the US, but like, has its own unique differences that is different from mainland US. And so that's what's salient to me. And those are the four identities that I think I probably think about on a regular basis. And you also travel a lot, Jenny, like not saying that has anything to do with immigrants state status, is but um I just feel like those two are also go hand in hand with each other that
00:14:38
Speaker
you strike as someone who probably don't really attach to one specific place more than some of others. Yeah, and there's probably something to that because as a kid I was traveling a lot and not not just but just traveling but be relocating and living my lives and so I think that probably shaped who I am today.
00:15:00
Speaker
This was a good exercise. And I'm wondering, I would love to like you know pull the audience and see like what identities they they came up with. to them go Going back to your question, Duck, about like you know the work that we did, the prep work that Ekko and I tried to do. i didn't Personally, I didn't really do much because I felt overwhelmed.
Exploring AAPI Data Disparities
00:15:18
Speaker
And I was like, well, I can't read through all these articles. got twelve You do a search and you've got like 12,000 hits. And I'm just like, oh my goodness, this is like this is way too much. it's a lot And so an alternative solution that we came up with, and we've sort of like talked about this offline, is going through this website that I came across and it's called AAPI data. And basically it's a really cool website because it.
00:15:47
Speaker
consolidates or collates all these different types of data based on like citizenship status, internet access, disability, you know education, poverty. And you can look at them dynamically based on not just race, but also ethnic groups. And I believe that they also provide racial breakdowns of other non-Asian groups as well. I know our audience members can't see this, but since we are a group of Vietnamese, Chinese, and Korean. I'm just going to go ahead and put that, put those ethnic filters on and see what we have. Yeah. And Jenny, while we were doing that, I think one thing we did talk about just between you and I yeah ah last time was even though the internet had, if you put like intersectionality, it will come up with like 20,000 hits. However, the one actually touched upon Asians.
00:16:38
Speaker
are not that many, like meaning like researchers haven't really dig into the intersectionality between Asians and one the other attributes or two more. So I think that's one of the motives for us to do this and exercise together and see what's the possibility out there. Yeah, thanks so much for mentioning that. I mean, it's not a surprise.
00:16:59
Speaker
so Does anybody want to describe like what you're seeing on the screen? Yeah. so So for our audience members, Jenny is actually on, we're also on a Zoom call along with this recording and she's sharing her screen. It's actually a pretty an amazing website. It looks like we're able to break down ethnicity, ah select the state or have it be nationwide. And it's similar to what we were talking about, right? So Jenny, Echo and I were talking about visible identities and then invisible identities as well, too, because they have internet access, um home ownership, SES, disability, and it breaks down different types of disability, whether it be cognitive, self-care, vision, hearing, health care status, and it seems like it's very comprehensive.
00:17:44
Speaker
which makes it warms my heart a little bit. and I'll kind of pause there a little bit because I'm going to go on a tangent and be a little political because I know in polling data, Asians are not being categorized as an important group and we know that we are, but it's it kind of shows you some sometimes where we're wanted, not wanted, or were viewed as important or not. But I'm glad there's this ah website, this database that has us all this information that we can then aggregate or disaggregate where we need to dive into certain pieces of of data. so
00:18:25
Speaker
So where do we want to start with? And I, I added an extra category, Asian, Indian, just out of curiosity, which um rabbit hole do we want to go down to? We start with like population citizenship status. I want to know how much people are making. I'm kind of nosy like that. Oh, okay. So moving on housing income let's go ahead and click that life changes. All right. Oh, quite obvious. quite ah that that's hard So we added, uh,
00:18:55
Speaker
Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, at Asian, Indian, and black as a category or as a reference. Maybe you can even add like. yeah Do we have white ah white alone? white The majority group, yeah. All right. Interesting. Wow. Interesting. I feel like we have to break this down for our audience. So it looks like Jenny was able to pull the data. It looks like white non-Hispanic alone. So yeah ah you you had to select white and non-Hispanic and not add any other race. It looks like their annual household, is it household? Yeah, median household income.
00:19:29
Speaker
is about 80,000 for Vietnamese, it's about 82 for Korean, it's 88 for Chinese, 97 and for Asian Indian or South Asian Indian, it's 146,000.
00:19:49
Speaker
i chuckle laughes because That is such a huge difference. Even when you're comparing the income of indianamerican so Asian Indians to like Chinese and Korean, because $97,000, that's quite high. $87,000 and $82,000, that's above. yeah And it's higher than what the median income for Black Americans, which is $49,000.
00:20:11
Speaker
But wow, 146,000, that's like three times what African-Americans make. So um I want to say like, this is us taking a look at income data. But I know one of the things that we've talked about and we've written about is actually some of this stuff doesn't take and into control like education level. So maybe if we were actually to break it down another level, education attainment would be something that could explain the differences in median household income.
00:20:40
Speaker
and je Okay, so while you were saying that, I just went ahead and applied another filter or a different filter, because I don't think the filters intersect. So now we're looking at educational attainment. And again, like I'm seeing a big difference between um Asian Indian and all other groups. Mm hmm. Mm hmm.
00:21:03
Speaker
um Are you looking at the the bachelor's degree or higher, Jenny? Yeah. So it looks like Asian Indian has 77% education or BA attainment or higher. And the next one that follows is I believe Korean <unk> woo at 60% followed by Chinese at 57%.
00:21:25
Speaker
And then it looks like white non-Hispanic is 38. And then we got Vietnamese folks at 33 and then ah black alone at 24. So there's a ah potentially huge differences in just those percentages that we don't know what the margin of error is, but from a glance, it does look like there's um huge differences, especially if we take into consideration millions of people. Yeah. And I think um in general speaking like that, education attainment,
00:21:55
Speaker
partially explained the the income bagab, but you will also see a reverse trend that say, for example, like Korean Americans actually have a higher BA or higher ah education attainment than Chinese, but I believe the household income is actually the reverse pattern. So sometimes I think the education attainment explain partial of the variance, but not all.
00:22:23
Speaker
z Yeah, absolutely. Because I recall for Vietnamese, we were a little bit above average, but we have 33%. It's half, almost half of what ah Chinese and Koreans have in terms of education attainment. So maybe education attainment doesn't always lead to higher incomes. Despite what we are told to believe. Those myths, right?
00:22:48
Speaker
Yeah. Or that income, because that income and we look at is the average. I bet the group has a huge variance, like the two extreme ends. I think it was median, right? So it was a median. Oh, it was median? Yeah, median, I think, takes care of the the extreme ends because it's looking at- Okay, okay. Yeah. Oh, yeah, you're right. You're right. Yeah, it's median. I'm going to go ahead and click on citizenship status and see what happens. Oh, interesting. let's Let's take a look at it. What do you got, Jenny?
00:23:15
Speaker
Okay. So this is interesting showing that black and white non-Hispanic over 96% are US citizens. And again, that's not, it doesn't surprise me. Whereas for Asian Indians, 65% are US citizens and Vietnamese are at 84%. Chinese are at 71%.
00:23:40
Speaker
And Koreans are at 77%. Sorry, that was kind of out of order. But basically, ah more Vietnamese percentage wise are US citizens compared to any other Asian.
00:23:51
Speaker
it makes It makes sense because a lot of us came in the 70s and 80s and maybe early 90s and there's been opportunities for us to um you know take the take the test being here as long as we have. um What does surprise me is that here's the thing, like this breakdown is US citizen versus not US citizens because there's also you know we've We've talked about this in our past episodes or for folks who are on visa status, right whether it be visa status to work in the US. s and I don't think this is accounting for it. so There's a bit of nuance that you know if you're looking for certain data, it may be there for you. It may not, because to categorize as a citizen or not is kind of It kind of blurs the whole workforce, at least for me. Because like when I think about workforce, it's US citizens, people on green cards, people on visas that are eligible to work in the United States. So this this is helpful. um But I feel like sometimes if I'm looking for something more nuanced, something more disaggregated might be more helpful.
00:24:53
Speaker
Oh, that's a really good point. So people who are green cards would count in this category as not US citizens. Yes. Got it. Got it. Yeah. That makes sense. So yeah, we'll probably see a bigger difference. My hunt tells me that Asian Indians are probably going to have a larger portion of like green card and Visa to the other groups. Mm hmm. Yeah. And I would say like maybe for a sorry, go ahead, go back. Oh, I was saying yeah, I agree. um I think a lot of them are on H1B Visa. Mm hmm.
00:25:22
Speaker
And I would say like for Vietnamese folks, like they' I've been here long enough that, you know, I think that the for us when we came over, when we got green cards, it was actually ones that actually didn't expire for a long time or didn't expire at all.
00:25:38
Speaker
So ah there's a chance that there's still folks that are out there like that. I don't know how many people people would be on on Visa, though. Although I know there are cases like that. What else should we
Cultural Perceptions in Disability Reporting
00:25:50
Speaker
look at? I mean, this is really interesting. How about disability? Disability? Alright. Yeah, I wonder if like Asian folks even report this.
00:25:58
Speaker
It looks like they have multiple different categories for disabilities. So like ambulatory disability, cognitive, um independent living, self-care, vision, and hearing. So like visible versus in-disability. Should we start with ambulatory? And can we, for our audience members who don't know what ambulatory means, can we say what that is? I think they have a definition here. yeah So the definition that they have is this refers to like a physical disability. And the way they define it is people who have condition or a condition that substantially limits one or more basic physical activities such as walking, climbing stairs, reaching, lifting or carrying. Interesting. I don't think we shared this with the audience, so I'm just going to briefly describe what we're seeing on the screen. So we're looking at disability based on physical disability, and it seems like ninety more than 90% for all groups, um black, white, Asian, and Indian, Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese.
00:26:52
Speaker
um report that they are not disabled, that they don't have any ambulatory difficulties. And for Black, Americans, it's 91%. For White, Americans, it's 92%. And for the asian Asian groups or Asian ethnicities, it's a lot higher. So for Asian Indians, 97%. For Chinese, it's 96%. Koreans, 96%. And for Vietnamese, it's also 95% who report that they don't have a disability.
00:27:19
Speaker
But it's interesting because I'm wondering, is it because there are less disabled people in the Asian ethnic community or are they just not acknowledging that they have a disability?
00:27:31
Speaker
Well, here's the thing. This is a this is a ah going back to our visible and and invisible identities. like This is one that's visible, right? We can actually see if someone's having difficulty you know climbing stairs or walking. It's interesting to see that because you know Jenny was focusing on the numbers of no ambulatory difficulties. and we take When we take a look at the ones that do, it looks like and Asian, Indian, Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese, those numbers are half of what whites and ah blacks ah report, which is interesting, right? Because it's like, is it because we're underreporting, or is there some other factor that could be contributing to this?
00:28:15
Speaker
Or is it actually because we actually the aging community doesn't have this problem? Yeah, because when I think about this now, like there have been periods of time in my life where my back has gone out and I couldn't walk for weeks. And if you ask me if I've ever really had like physical limitations, I may not think about that time period and just say no. But in reality, when I think about it now, it's like, yeah, I did have that ah experience that at weeks at a time.
00:28:44
Speaker
you know Can I do a rainy stretch here? I also sometimes realize like that image, like Asians are being independent, we're resourceful by ourselves, where you don't need the other's help. That kind of mentality sometimes can get into this. like i Because again, this is a personal observation and nothing has been validated. I also feel like my white colleagues sometimes at work are more likely to take sickness compared to some of my Asian colleagues in general. Like I just felt like there are sometimes like they put themselves at the priority versus Asian colleagues. Sometimes it's like, I need to post through this cause I have this report due in two weeks and I can't really afford to take the sickness versus I might, my colleagues sometimes like I don't care. I will put my house as my priority, which is,
00:29:41
Speaker
Essentially, I think everyone should be doing that. Again, this is my personal solution. Nothing has been validated against the number itself. You know, Echo, now that you mentioned it, I don't think I've ever taken a sick day. What? I worked.
00:29:57
Speaker
Me either. So I feel like sometimes we have to understand the rules to play by the rules. And I think sometimes sick leave gets the, it's the only when you're sick, do you have to take the lead. And if you take a look at it, and it could be different in different handbooks, take a look at your respective organization's handbook and what, how they define sick leave. Cause someone will include time to actually go and work out to maintain your physical and mental health. Oh, yeah. we'll do Don't we all do that? Shouldn't we all do that? Oh, yeah, absolutely. And don't get me wrong, I actually do feel like we all should put both our physical and mental health as the priority. And I'm just speaking to my own experience. Like, I just don't feel like I'm
00:30:43
Speaker
I've done, like, for me, like, sickly, being like, I'm lying in my bed, I can't get up, I can't really walk through my ah to my computer and can't really, like, open up my laptop. Because there are days, even when I'm taking a DTO, I will still, like, open up my Outlook and see what's going on. And sometimes I can't resist myself replying to the email. So you're never truly off. No. Which is not healthy. For listeners, don't do that.
00:31:14
Speaker
I fight against that stereotype. Take the time you need to get well to maintain your mental and physical health, please.
00:31:34
Speaker
Well, I mean, I think this was kind of an interesting dive into this website.
Applying Intersectionality in Workplace Research
00:31:39
Speaker
Well, I wanted us to bring this back to the workplace. And I echo you touched on this earlier on about how we don't really collect a lot of this type of data. And even if they do, it's rarely if ever looked at through an intersectionality lens. Can we talk a little bit about that before we end the episode?
00:31:58
Speaker
Sure. What's the best way to kind of approach the intersectionality? Are we talking about like in terms of like, I know we talked about the workplace. What about the research realm? Like, is it? Oh my gosh. Can I, sorry, because I don't want this idea to flip away from me. You know what would be a cool study? It's not going to be an intersectionality. It's nearly just looking at how many people who are taking sick leave for different race as well as the group. Guess what? Because Asians have the stereotype of being diligent, being like hardworking. Echo, Echo lost her voice working so hard. brush the
00:32:41
Speaker
i love I lost my voice because I'm so excited about this idea because I think we have been talking about that, the follow up study being like how we can test on Asians are actually more it It will be more acceptable for the majority group to to be less hardworking, but it will be ah expectation-wide nation for Asians to be hardworking and being diligent. And that sickly of data, or whatever the deep data, it doesn't have to be sickly. It can be DTO, or it can be PTO, it can be, or Yang Ru of the league, and see
00:33:20
Speaker
What's I would just be curious and see if someone who actually taking a longer leave with the difference, like a performance rating, for example, differ by their risk. So that's just an idea. Good luck getting that data. Yeah. I could see, I could see you getting the data from like, just like a survey and asking Asian professionals, you know, how many days did you take off in the past year? Yeah. Yeah. And the, and the,
00:33:48
Speaker
Organization should down that like they always just looking at performance rating and see how does that like differ by majority or by some of other groups, but they should also control for the number of days people are on leave like whether that actually will impact how they were being rated anyway, that's That's a separate study from the intersectionality. Maybe that could be the follow up study. I mean, even looking at it based on just like this aggregating based on race, and then going one step further and disaggregating it based on ethnicity, because I think race and ethnicity are two intersections. So you can be Asian American, and Asian.
00:34:26
Speaker
But you're also either Vietnamese or Chinese or Korean or biracial. You might have like Asian Americans or Asian professionals who are biracial. So are you collecting that information and, you know, subsetting your outcome data based on those things? And I think the answer is no.
00:34:43
Speaker
and And you know what would be interesting is to overlay that with gender. Because by default, default that people also ah have the mentality of women going to be ah spending times with their family, especially they're having kids and things like that. And I would be so curious because that's where almost of the the conflict comes in between the two identities. So as an Asian, you're expected to work hard, but but also as a woman, people are kind of like women gonna be take care of the family, they're gonna spend less time at work. So will be it would be interesting to see how those two, like are they gonna balance out some of the expectations or they're actually making it worse? Why worse?
00:35:27
Speaker
Because that's the intersection of, you know, race and gender, double jeopardy. And I do think women are going to be more burnt out. Maybe they don't take as much PTO. Jenny, I want to go back to kind of your answer. Like when you were talking about it and you said the answer was like, no, they're not going to look into it. Why do you think that is? why Why do you think that's the answer is no, that they're not going to look into sectionality? What's your, what's your thought on that?
00:35:53
Speaker
Oh, the answer is because we are a monolith Asians. There's such a thing as Asian Indian, Chinese American, Vietnamese. What? You're blowing my mind. Most people look at Asians and they think Chinese, you know, the same way they look at Latinos and anything next. I mean, that that's why I think an effort like this, what API data is doing and dis-aggregating those different outcomes.
00:36:16
Speaker
by different ethnicities plus the different, and you know, variables that we looked at. I think that's so important. I think organizations should take a look at that. So am I hearing there are two different interssects intersectionality that we we should be looking at? The first one is this very like ah between subjects where you see people in different categories, like race and gender. Those are two different categories and we can intersect them. And there's a second type that is even within that category itself, how we can, to me, that's more like a within subject kind of difference, right? Like within the Asian itself,
00:37:01
Speaker
There's different ethnic ethnicity groups that do actually differ in a lot of the behaviors, the expectations, the perceptions. So to me, that's almost like a two different types of interssecct intersectionality that we can go with. So I'm a visual person. And so in my head, I'm like, OK, you can focus on like two identities, two circles.
Complexities and Interdisciplinary Approaches
00:37:23
Speaker
And we can overlap those things, whether it's gender and race, you know, gender and ethnicity. And then you can add other circles to that Venn diagram. So you can have like multiple circles. So you could look at, you know, Asian ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic status. And, you know, if you start looking at all those different.
00:37:43
Speaker
angle But I know that the the reason for not doing it is because, and and I do acknowledge the fact that we are a group of like 30 plus cultures and ethnicities. And so at what point do you say, okay, I'm going to look at Asian versus Asian. all of the different potential ethnicities. So like, then you, then you are underpowered. You might not be able to make informed decisions that inform policy. And so I do acknowledge that, but I don't think they even go there. Like that's not even something that they're even considering because a lot of organizations tend to group us with white people or tend to just leave us out. Yeah. And Jenny, you do actually brought like a really good, um,
00:38:30
Speaker
is like a topic there because um I think this has brought us back to think about like why do we do or why do we study intersectionality and I think I read um this is the article that they were talking about ah the methods and techniques but one of the things that I think I thought is really helpful for us to think of what are the attributes that we should be studying on this topic is basically in that article like they mentioned there are different types of methods, whether it's multileveling, whether it's moderation, whether it's interactions, but none of them can be sufficient if we are not thinking about or not framing this in the attention to address the inequalities or the power relations. And I thought that was
00:39:21
Speaker
quite fascinating to me because I think broadly speaking yeah like we can go broad like we can dive into in in depth as much as possible but to what end like what do we really care and what we do we really wanted to um address Because essentially, is we well again, the article also suggests that we should be looking at some of the historical oppressed or marginalized populations and we should also take into account the social structural context for those kind of studies. And I thought that's something definitely spot on because
00:39:58
Speaker
i I don't want us to just dig because we have this category like race and gender, so we're just going to inturnate them together. It's not just that. There is a reason why we study women and Asian. There's a reason why we study the Vietnamese versus Asian Indian, for example. I i glanced at there our notes when I was kind of having for this this podcast, and I'm not sure if I i read it and it went into my head, ah but I wrote some other notes down on just the research, how we would go about doing it, right? And my question is that, is there foundation in foundational research for us to even cite in the first place?
00:40:41
Speaker
The answer that probably is a general no, right? And when Echo mentioned that, you know, we have to talk about this in the ah historical um oppressed, marginalized people, or the social context, what am I thinking of? Now I'm thinking of actually history.
00:40:59
Speaker
It's not even in psychology. right And the the social ah structural context, I'm thinking of sociology. So for those who actually want to actually get into and dive deep into this, it's not like you can actually just go in and just cite empirical data, empirical studies one after another that's been built on. You're going to have to build that. You're going to build that road yourself to even showcase what the history is like, how historically people have been treated, and why that may be the case to showcase these inequities to even show to spotlight folks that, you know, these this is why it's important. That's to even get to the question. So I feel like there's a lot of barriers there to even have this intersectionality work be done. So it's not uncommon to feel like the work that that when it does come out, it's actually quite rare. And it's rare for a reason because it's actually so much harder to do.
00:41:52
Speaker
So it's food for thought. And I wish we had the answer and say, okay, you should group these ethnic groups with each other. You should do these types of sub-grouping. But I think the answer is still, you know, the jury is still out. um So it might be something worth.
00:42:10
Speaker
pursuing and maybe we'll see Echo doing a study on intersectionality study. Who knows? That's if she doesn't take sick leave, right Jenny? Yes, exactly. I mean, now that I've realized that, I'm like, okay, you know what? On days where I just want to go to the gym and hang out there all day, I'm just going to take a sick day. I'm going to be a gym rat for the day.
00:42:31
Speaker
Just take care of myself. So you're investing in your health. Yeah.
Episode Conclusion with Haiku
00:42:34
Speaker
Yeah. So as usual, know we will have a high-cool reason by ChatGPT for our episode. So um definitely this time, ChatGPT, I think, did a good job representing this episode. So here is what we have, we're given. Threats of power cross. Class, age, ability blend.
00:42:58
Speaker
Strengths in layered lives, what do you think? What was the prompt? So I asked her to write a haiku um intersectionality study for Asians in the workplace. Yeah, and um initially it does came as um many threads converge, race, gender, culture intertwined. oh strengths in every voice, which I think it's good enough. But then I asked Tragi to go beyond race and gender. And this is the final version it gave me. So it gave you class and age. Agey, ability. Yeah. Cool. All right. Well, thank you so much for tuning in to another episode of Hidden in Plain Sight, your podcast for all things Asian. We will catch you on our next episode. Bye.